I could fill this whole article with bizarre foods eaten by Andrew Zimmern. But those are only a few of the unusual dishes he’s eaten over nine years as host of several U.S. Travel Channel shows (on DTour cable in Canada): Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern, Andrew Zimmern’s Bizarre Foods and most recently, Bizarre Foods America. He has been at the world’s tables for 150 shows.

He was recently in Vancouver filming an episode of Bizarre Foods in America. One stop was at Tojo’s Japanese restaurant where chef Hidekazu Tojo has frequent encounters with creatures from the deep.

While cameras rolled, chef Tojo prepared a meal for Zimmern. He wrangles a 68-pound octopus (caught the day before in local waters and Tojo’s never seen one that big). He slices through king crab, while a rare, large box crab, the colour of the ocean floor, stands by, claws clawing and awaiting fate. Tojo filets a ling cod and Zimmern is impressed. “Watching you cut fish is absolutely beautiful,” he says. “The fish bled first. That’s why tastes so good,” Tojo says, with his habit of dropping some words.

“This is one of the country’s great restaurants,” Zimmern says to the camera. “You can see it in the environment. This is what other restaurants aspire to. He uses food of the region and his cooking is adventurous and interesting and speaks to the place.” Zimmern hangs back, letting Tojo’s seafood skills be the story.

Later, Zimmern sits down to a feast featuring king crab, Dungeness crab, tuna, oysters, geoduck, ling cod, sablefish, and octopus. Later, Tojo says, he was impressed with Zimmern’s food knowledge when he identified the secret ingredients on the kusshi oysters. “I put dashi and ground some Japanese pepper with yuzu skin. I add a little bit and he knew. I was very surprised. He is a gourmet guy.”

Zimmern’s unusual experiences with bizarre meals around the world pale in comparison to the year he spent homeless on the streets of New York City, addicted to drugs and alcohol. He stole purses from the backs of chairs in chi-chi cafés on Madison Avenue to support his habits and he’s quoted on eater.com saying: “I sprinkled a bottle of Comet cleanser around so the rats and roaches wouldn’t cross over at night so I could pass out in some peace and quiet and that’s what I thought was normal.”

Zimmern has been clean for 21 years, but he’s clear on the nature of addiction. “I’ll always be a recovering addict,” he says.

Bizarre is a relative term and bizarre foods might very well be a substitute for a more destructive addiction. But how bizarre can American food be? He turns to the dictionary meaning of bizarre. “I take great pleasure in helping redefine the word. The dictionary definition I love is ‘something unique or unusual.’ ”

North Americans, he feels, are contemptuous of unfamiliar foods. “We eat a very, very small range of food. We are many generations removed from eating for subsistence where you’re chowing down to save every single piece of the animal. I know there’s the snout-to-tail movement but in the main, the Average Joe is still focused on a handful of cuts and wants tomatoes 365 days of the year.

“I find it incredibly ironic that chefs are charging an incredible amount of money for pig’s ears and foraged foods. It’s crazy. As a kid, I’ve always eaten everything. I grew up in New York City — a whole different kind of farm. Somehow when I was young, a cultural globetrotter perspective got sparked inside of me. It’s always been who I am.”

His shows, he says, were never meant to shock but to seek the unique and interesting (such as pit viper ice cream, cane rat with tilapia, wallaby and dung beetle). “Food is an important lens through which I view the world,” he says, insisting he’s never been repulsed by any food. “That’s the wrong word. I don’t seek out foods that shock. I’m just trying to tell stories through foods. I can see history in a bowl of soup.”

Whatever drove Zimmern to drugs and alcohol two decades ago is the powerful force that drives his work. “I’m in the deep end of the pool,” he says. (Zimmern lives in Minnesota and now volunteers at a drug and alcohol addiction treatment centre.)

His experience as an addict is the filter on the lens through which he views the world. “It opened my eyes to the value of what the world has to offer and what life experience is about,” he says. “It’s given me a globalist perspective. I’ve learned respect for people and to bring something to the world rather than ask what I can take. “

As for his visit to Vancouver, he took to Twitter, raving about the city. “I tweeted that I may have found the most perfect city on the planet to live. It’s pristine and idyllic and the food scene is second to none because of access to the wild.”

(The Canadian premier of Season 5 of Bizarre Foods America will be announced on dtourtv.com.)

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